Your Right to Know

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The United States and its allies will stage a naval exercise in
the Persian Gulf in May to practice minesweeping and escorting ships, the U.S. Navy said yesterday,
a maneuver likely to be seen in the region as guarding against a potential threat from Iran.

Representatives from more than 30 nations will gather in Bahrain for International Mine
Countermeasures Exercise 13 May 6-30, eight months after they staged previous exercises at a time
when Israel and Iran were trading threats of war.

In early 2012, Iran repeatedly threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow exit route
through which most of the gulf’s oil and gas is exported, amid heightened tension with the West
over Tehran’s disputed nuclear-development program.

But such threats have faded over the past few months, as world powers have tried to resolve
their differences with Tehran through negotiations. U.S. Cmdr. Jason Salata told Reuters that the
exercises in May would be limited to the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, not the Strait of Hormuz
itself.

The failure of those negotiations, between six world powers and Iran over its disputed nuclear
program, has jump-started the congressional push for even tougher sanctions aimed at crippling the
economy in Tehran.

The latest talks this past weekend in Kazakhstan proved inconclusive as the United States,
Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany pressed Iran to significantly limit its production and
stockpiling of enriched uranium. The international community fears that Tehran is developing a
nuclear weapon; Iran insists its work is for peaceful purposes.

The stalled negotiations — there were no plans for new talks — gave fresh impetus to bipartisan
legislation in the House to impose new sanctions on Iran while Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., was putting
together a package of penalties likely in the next week or so, said congressional aides and
sanctions experts.

The penalties are certain to draw strong bipartisan support as lawmakers, fearful of Iran’s
ambitions and worried about its threat to Israel, have overwhelmingly embraced past sanctions. The
latest effort would mark the fifth time since June 2010 that Congress had slapped penalties on
Iran.

“I’m concerned Tehran is only using talks as a delaying tactic — in the same way North Korea
used a similar tactic to develop its nuclear arsenal,” Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., chairman of the
House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement.

“Rather, the bipartisan legislation I’ve introduced further increases economic pressure on
Iranian leaders to give up their nuclear-weapons program. Congress will continue to turn up the
pressure; it is our best chance to succeed.”

Royce and Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the top Democrat on the committee, introduced
legislation in February that would broaden sanctions by expanding the list of blacklisted Iranian
companies and moving to cut off Tehran’s access to the euro.

Kirk, a top sponsor of sanctions legislation since his arrival in the Senate in January 2011, is
crafting a bill that would hit regime officials on human rights with travel bans and seizure of
assets, and essentially impose a commercial and financial embargo on Iran.

It also would basically impose a tough arms embargo on Iran and its proxies in Gaza and southern
Lebanon, as well as North Korea, Syria and Sudan. The measure would close loopholes in current law
on Iran’s access to foreign exchange reserves.